Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So I thought about an idea that would solve three things at the same time, perhaps I am not seeing the whole picture and am missing something but I consider this good enough to post about it and hopefully generate some discussion/traction.

Clone costs: after ~80m SP or so (some argue lower) the costs of activating each new clone become prohibitive and favor spreading your account's allowed SP/hour into as many specialized alts as possible. Although I sense the system is working as intended, since this effectively acts as a tax on older players versus new players, the payout for high end clone costs is currently ridiculously high and the only reason to keep it around is probably the beneficial effect of this isk sink to the economy (if you still chose to play with high sp) or to the Icelandic economy (if you chose to spread the sp through many alts/accounts).

Learning implants: these have two problems IMO. On one hand they create a link between in space performance and your pilot's ability to learn skills, these are two separate unrelated things that should be kept apart. Implants that provide in game combat benefits are fine since you use them to get an "edge" and if you don't use this advantage wisely you may end up losing your expensive snake set, however creating a link between your pilot's ability to learn and the implants he has to risk if he wants to PVP acts as an isk barrier to PVP (if you just don't care and fly with implants anyways, getting new ones if you lose your clone) or as an accepted loss from the fact that you are going to PVP (run with no implants, don't care about learning speed/skills). On the other hand, and somewhat related, they favor risk aversion behavior which is bad for the game, specifically they create an incentive to staying in empire and/or avoiding PVP altogether. Again the only reason I see for this discrepancy is that these learning implants are probably an awesome isk sink for the economy since most that PVP are tempted to risk using them anyway since the benefit is significant. I argue that skill learning is a long term decision making process and it's speed of execution should not be tied to the short term decision making processes of a pilot's daily life.

Docking fees: I read the previous suggestions that were made about this issue and I agree with most of the critics, however and a bit like taxes in real life, if you consider the "giving with one hand, taking with the other" approach I think that docking fees are a good proposal in terms of creating a new isk sink that would hopefully allow lower clone costs and cheaper/removal of learning implants, with a beneficial effect both to the economy as well as to player behavior in terms of fighting risk aversion. I therefore propose that we should have docking fees on NPC stations in a way similar to what happens in outposts, such fees should be one time only and paid on docking, independent of the number of ships stored in a station as well as the time your ships spend there. I see it therefore more like a toll and less like a time based fee you pay when parking a jet at an airfield or a yacht at a Marina. This fee should be residual and inversely proportional to the number of docking attempts done each month at a given station, ideally it should be adjusted monthly in a way similar to office rent calculations and the more elegant solution would be to make NPC stations function similarly to player controlled structures, financing their hypothetical monthly maintenance costs through these docking fees, adjusted monthly by the material costs of keeping the structure up and the recent history of docking operations performed. Further, these fees should be adjusted by standings and I propose that some stations should be kept as free to dock so a broke player's inconvenience is at most to be forced to jump through some extra systems in order to dock up. It is further a good idea that asymmetries between high sec / low sec / 0.0 NPC are created in terms of favoring movement towards these areas.

I don't have a specific idea of how much these docking fees should be as it really depends on the overall economy figures, basically the total isk spent per month on docking fees should compensate the reduced sink effect from decreased clone activation costs and learning implants destroyed as well as it would allow the introduction of a small tax system to control the money flowing out of the economy in a much better fashion and tied withe overall global player behavior instead of focusing the drain on those that risk it by doing PVP.

I am fully aware that this will hurt those that dock up a lot more than others, for mission runners for example the effect is hopefully mitigated by the fee decreasing with the number of docking operations performed.

There may also be a perverse effect being introduced, coming from players flocking to systems where the docking fees are lower, again I don't have the figures but considering the overall clone costs + learning implant costs divided by the number of docking attempts on a monthly basis I think the fee will end up being small enough to prevent this kind of behavior.

Finally, note the mixed bag nature of the idea, kinda like politics in real life you give everyone something - learning, reduced clone costs - while at the same time introducing a small tax that will have a beneficial effect on the economy and aligns player behavior with what is intended with the game, evening out the field between 0.0, low sec and high sec in terms of ability to learn on one hand and reducing barriers to entry that make risk averse players avoid PVP.

Note that a similar process could be applied to introduce jump gate activation tolls, however since we don't have player owned jump gates yet I am lacking ideas as how to do the math properly and arrive at an elegant solution.

Well, that's it. Thanks for reading and flame way :)